Climate Change and Drought

Source: NCAR

Yesterday 19 October 2010 the Universities Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) issued a press release describing its work on the water supply aspects of climate change:  Climate change: Drought may threaten much of globe within decades.  The release and the research on which it is based provide yet more evidence, as if such were needed, of how critical climate change is to the human future. No, agriculture cannot simply move from Iowa to northern Manitoba for all to be well! The drying out of middle latitude zones is ominous indeed and does not bode well for maintaining a decent standard of living for the world's increasing human population. The online version of Scientific American has an interesting article based on the UCAR report.

Related articles

• Drought could hit world's populous areas: study (scientificamerican.com)

The Desiccation of the Aral Sea

The Death of the Aral Sea

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

In the slide set on water footprints we used last session, there was a photo of fishing boats stranded in a desert, at the bottom of what was once a large saline lake, the Aral Sea. Similar to the Great Salt Lake in Utah or the Dead Sea, the Aral sea filled the lowest part of an interior basin with not outlets to the world ocean, but it was far less salty than those two inland seas because it received a much larger annual input of fresh water. Prior to the mid 1970s, it was an important supplier of fish to nearby areas and to the larger Soviet Union. As the lake has dried, the remaining water has become more saline, and many fish species that once flourished have been extinguished, unable to survive in the Aral Sea's remaining and increasingly briny waters.

During the Soviet era there was a huge push to increase crop production in the Central Asian republics, and in particular the production of cotton. The streams flowing from the Hindu Kush mountain range far to the south and east, in particular the exotic rivers the Amy Darya and the Syr Darya, were diverted to irrigate cotton fields.Most of that water has been lost to evapotranspiration, and the rivers now bring virtually no additional fresh water into the Aral Sea. The pictures above show the desiccation of the Sea, almost entirely due to diversion of streams feeding into it. The USGS has a good website describing the desiccation along with some additional photos. 

Source: Wordpress.com

Related articles

• Aral Sea Shrinking, Focus of UN Visit to Central Asia (brainz.org)

The Arid U.S. West

Grand Canyon & Colorado River, 1987 ©eop

After our meeting today, I got questions from several people about books on the arid west of the United States. In class I commented on three titles:

Webb, Walter Prescott. 1931 (original publication, there were several subsequent editions, the most recent appears to be 1983). The Great Plains. (Austin: University of Texas).  Webb was professor of history at the University of Texas and during his lifetime was a greatly influential voice in the study of American history, especially that of the west. He wrote widely on water related topics, particularly as they related to Texas, and his 1954 work More Water for Texas prompted that state to look more carefully at its use of a scarce resource. A 1957 article in Harper's Magazine "American West: Perpetual Mirage" was one of the seminal works in the formation of the environmentalist movement. He has been dead since the 1960s, and his books are a little dated, but they are immensely readable and recommended to anyone with an interest in water and the American West.

Wallace Stegner, who many consider one of the finest American writers, was best known as a novelist, but he also wrote a fine piece of history Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. It is still in print and also available for Kindle readers. Once again a great read for anyone with an interest in water, American history and the settlement of the west.


John Wesley Powell was a Civil War hero, he lost an arm, and is best known for his epic journey in 1869 through the Grand Canyon. His influence on this country was much greater than that single journey, for he was the effective founder of the profession of geology in the US and of the US Geological Survey (USGS). His Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States published by the USGS has been a touchstone in discussions of the arid regions of the west since it was first published in 1878. He noted that types of agriculture and land management common east of the Mississippi were simply not feasible in the west and made suggestions of possible alternatives. The Report is available in a rather cumbersome form from the American Memory project of the Library of Congress (did not have time to locate other online versions, but I suspect there may be one or more).


There are many, many more good books (not to mention articles) on the arid portions of the U. S. West. A few suggestions:
1. Meinig, Donald. 1968. The Great Columbia Plain. (Seattle: University of Washington Press).
2. Reisner, Marc. 1986. Cadillac Desert. (New York: Viking).
3. Limerick, Patricia Nelson. 2000. Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company).

Toxic Spill in Hungary Flows Toward the Danube

Toxic Spill, Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in southern Hungary

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

At the same time there is good news that the trapped miners in Chile will likely be released from their Hades in a few days, another industrial accident related to mining threatens the water of the Danube in Central Europe. A waste reservoir at a Hungarian People's Republic era alumina plant burst and sent a wall of toxic sludge downstream, the wave from the broken reservoir killing at least four people and injuring many others while making dozens homeless. Several thousand people have been directly impacted by the spill. Some reports suggest that the remaining sludge is also likely to flow into the stream. 

As yet I have not accessed a hydrographic map of the region, so I do not know much about the flow of the small tributary of the Danube, but it appears to enter the Danube upstream from Budapest and possibly also of the city of Györ. Not far away to the south of the spill, but apparently on the opposite side of a divide and in another watershed is Lake Balaton, Hungary's natural treasure. A shallow lake, a plume of toxic materials entering Balaton would be devastating for the economy and the psyche of Hungary. 

A news report on the Scientific American site suggests that the effects on the Danube are likely to be limited, but downstream users of that water, including many in the various Balkan Republics and on to the Black Sea are anxiously watching the spill.  In an earlier posting I discussed the possibility of an oil pipeline bursting and contaminating a major stream in the United States. The aging infrastructure in much of the western world presents many similar risks to rivers and lakes outside of North America.

Area downstream of the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant

Source:  NASA Earth Observatory

Related articles

• Toxic Spill in Hungary Could Take One Year to Clean Up [Video] (gawker.com)
• Hungary spill pollution eases, no big risk to Danube (scientificamerican.com)
• Toxic Sludge Could Spill Again, Hungary Government Warns (huffingtonpost.com)

Water and Development in Sub-saharan Africa: a few more notes

Drought in Central Africa 2002-2009

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A posting or two back I made some comments about a fantasy of economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa delivered by a speaker from the Mercatus Centre at George Mason University. In her presentation she utterly ignored the immense environmental issues which must be faced if the region is to enjoy even modest rates of economic growth over more than a year or two. Those environmental challenges combine with demographic problems and political instability to make extremely modest projections of future economic expansion for many of the countries in the region little more than wishful thinking. While there are several environmental issues of concern, and all of them are immense impediments to economic growth, at the moment, and likely for the foreseeable future, drought, the absence of adequate water to support rain fed agriculture, is the most significant one.

Drought in central Africa, during the period shown on the map above extending even into normally very humid areas, is the key problem for agriculture on the continent. Raising the currently abysmally low levels of food and fiber output per unit of land (or of labor) requires reliable water sources. In most areas that means adequate rainfall  given the absence of irrigation infrastructure. Recent climatic data, reflecting ongoing climate change, raise substantial doubt that adequate water will be reliably available even in some areas where adequate precipitation was once taken for granted. Shy of huge investments in irrigation facilities farmers will either have to shift to drought resistant crops and new cultivation techniques, usually lowering output per hectare, or face catastrophic decline in output using current crops and techniques.

Drought is also important for burgeoning urban populations. Not a few of those people driven into cities, thereby generating breathtaking rates of urban population growth in some Sub-Saharan countries, have left impoverished agricultural zones where drought has made crop and animal production and therefore subsistence rural living impossible. A number of African cities do not have reliable water supplies adequate even for their present populations, and any population growth means even less water available per capita without large investments to increase urban water supplies. If there is no reliable source of water near a city, then it is nearly impossible to bring adequate quantities of water into it at a feasible investment of resources.

I do not have the time between now and the end of the term further to investigate the dimensions of the problems of drought in Africa, so the topic will be mentioned but not discussed in detail in our course. Anyone who has a serious interest in the continent and its prospects for the future must invest time assessing the impact of drought. That assessment needs to include the immediate term future, for drought in Kenya and adjacent areas has been linked by some observers to the political problems currently brewing there and may also have links to political unrest elsewhere. Anyone who fails to make such an assessment is thoroughly unqualified to consider him or herself an "expert" on Sub-Saharan Africa or its prospects for the future. Hungry people are not easy to govern, and the food scarcity implicit in droughts is hardly conducive to economic growth! 

The Water Cycle

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

NASA's Earth Observatory, one of the great treasures of the internet and proof, as if it were needed, that government can do some wonderful things, has just published a web page closely related to our 29 September discussions on the earth's climate and the hydrologic cycle. The Water Cycle discusses climate and the cycling of water and has some excellent illustrations to support the discussion. If ours were an undergraduate class for university credit, I would assign that web page as required reading (viewing?). While ours is not a course for credit, I very strongly urge you to look at The Water Cycle for it reiterates some of what I said and provides some additional information related to our course on world water supply and more importantly, material useful in developing an understanding  of the world's water situation..

Notes VII

Mendoza, Argentina  ©eop

In our first session we talked about siltation and the failure of dams. Over the past week, a small dam in the Kingstowne section of Fairfax County failed draining small lake and leading to the death of wildlife. Fortunately no human lives or even housing units were damaged by the dam failure, but it left a mess that will require a substantial sum of money to repair. That break was not unexpected, for the dam was in need of rebuilding, and the lake behind it had been fouled by silt. Left behind is a swamp, probably a stinking swamp should warmer weather return in the next week or two. Dams, like all human devices for water control, need constant maintenance if they are to continue in service. Failure to maintain can lead to catastrophic collapse, and a dam failure can lead to loss of property and even loss of human life.

The last half of the session today, 6 October, and a substantial part of the next session on 13 October depend on a Power Point presentation developed by Prof. Arjen Hoekstra at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. To review the materials used today and to preview those to be discussed in the next session, the Power Point or a PDF version of it can be downloaded from the page: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Presentations